I am going to Paris, as one will, but what is unexpected is that I am bringing cheese. To Paris. The cheeseman at Neal’s Yard today was French, even, which brings the whole thing full circle.

“Don’t believe what you read in the paper,” he said, as he handed over the white-wrapped parcels, and I asked myself if he was referring to the myth that they make good cheese in France. “It is not as they say,” he said, “and Paris is not fire everywhere.”

“Very good,” I said, and wondered how I’d missed the thing about Paris being on fire. I came home to see what the Internet had to offer. Le Monde’s Web site says sixty-two million Europeans have tried cannabis. Le Nouvel Observateur reports that Gary Glitter has been charged for paedophilia in Vietnam.

I’ll be on the five o’clock train as planned, then, cocking a snook at the debilitating winter chill. I might stay in all day and read, but, dang it, I will be staying in all day and reading IN PARIS.

Going out is fun and all, because going out brings ossobuco at Carluccio’s, followed by a white chocolate–rose tart and fresh mint tea; because going out involves a late-night bus ride home through fancy lit-up Knightsbridge streets; because going out is heading to teatime with Elaine at Maison Bertaux, where the white-haired storekeep shuffles about, bringing croissants and coffees and profiterole tarts. But coming in, oh we like coming in, because coming in means radiator-smell throughout the house, and pasta on the boil steaming up the kitchen windows.

It’s surprising, the cold outside, but really only because I have been reading about India for days now. I have been steeped in the noontime tea of the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel. I have been living in pages dusty and crowded, where the beggars clank solitary coins in rusty tins, where the trains are late, where there are small airy balls of pink fluff to be gotten from the cottoncandywalla on the street. The days sound like heavy Singer sewing machines whirring, stopping, whirring, stopping. The land is hot, the time is hot.

So it is surprising, the cold outside, but it is nothing a pair of tights and a red coat can’t solve.

Last night in Southwark, down the street from the kebab place and the fried chicken place, behind a bright red door, Hens made beef rendang, bak kut teh, and a light chai poh omelette for girls in search of the tropics.

“We are going to have a curry out and watch ‘The X Factor’,” Philip had said, “so you should come.”

“Why not,” I’d said, even though I have homework this weekend, having to finish Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance before Monday night at seven p.m. What happens Monday night at seven p.m. is the book club meeting of the Society of Young Publishers, I know it sounds nerdy, but (a) I need to meet industry people, and (b) nerds rule OK.

PS, A Fine Balance is six hundred and fourteen pages long, and closing in on midnight Saturday I am on page seventy-seven. But I am the sort who is optimistic.



The Jubilee line takes a girl to Abbey Road, where we ordered SIXTY QUID of Chinese take-out, which is hands down the largest food delivery order I have ever placed, or seen placed, or, probably, will ever place or see placed. At this level of ordering, we weren’t even ordering by item name. Grace on the phone with Asian Express was like calling out the winning Lotto: “100M, 95B, 20, 30 for 3, 25F large, 74 standard, 46.” Sixty quid of Chinese take-out came in a large cardboard box like they were shipping supplies to the Middle East. There were soups, there were noodles, there was SWEET AND SOUR FRUITY SAUCE MIXED. There were prawn crackers and curry and not one but two dishes called “Selection”.

Sixty quid of Chinese take-out goes well with a pink Cava, now it’s a Saturday night. And I don’t normally watch TV, but, man, when I watch TV, I watch TV. On “Strictly Come Dancing”, a dance competition show, the men were dressed like butlers and the women were dressed like whores. On “Casualty”, an emergency-room drama, every family had problems. On “The X Factor”, well, “The X Factor” was the prize of the night. Horribly fascinating, especially when you are shouting at the television. I am going to date Shayne, who sings well enough to be a boyfriend, but not an Artiste. Grace is going to date Nicholas, who sings flat, but has nice eyes. All of us really wanted to vote out the Conway sisters, who sucked. The blond Conway sister cried when they found out they were in the bottom two this week, and Grace had no sympathy. “They are always crying,” she said, contemptuously. When one of the other Conway sisters belted out a very large cracked note in “One Moment in Time,” Philip said: “Fer feck’s sake.” We like Philip because he is Scottish and speaks cool. He pronounces the word “no” with the utmost delicacy, elegant like putting down a very fine bone china teacup on a very fine bone china saucer. This word, “no”, coming from Philip, is rimmed in gold, and has its pinky finger sticking out.

Thursday afternoon my supervisor at my temp gig tentatively suggested I come in for a half-day on Friday. “But I don’t want you to have to turn down a full day’s work elsewhere,” she said.

“A half day would be lovely.” I said. “I don’t mean to be unprofessional,” I said, “but I have a party to plan.”

Having work is nice—I do enjoy the whole charade of it, putting on a shirt with buttons, sitting tall and straight in an Aero chair, having somewhere I have to be. I can see how I might tire of this within a couple of months of steady employment, but for now it feels good.

But, so. Having work is nice, but getting to leave work in the middle of the day is very nice. At a quarter to two Friday afternoon, I was set free into the clear day. The bus on Plender took me back to my ’hood, with enough time yet to chat with the cheese man.

“This is a lunatic cheese,” he said, holding out a slice of something. I have said this before, and I will say it again: my mind is a sieve, which means I have now forgotten the name of this cheese I told him I would remember—which means the next time I’m in, I will have to say, “May I have some of the lunatic cheese, please?”

“This is a lunatic cheese,” he said. “It is made by a woman in Ireland. She is a bit of a loon herself. She is crazy as a blue flute.”

“As a—”

“As a blue flute.”

We love the cheese man. Between slices of Saint Gall and Mongomery cheddar, he told me about a book that came out last year, called Blessed are the Cheesemakers. “It is a slight read,” he said, “but the portraits of cheesemakers are quite accurate.”

“Oh,” he said, then, distracting himself from the chatting, “I have just done something very silly.” And here he showed me where he had tried to charge my card for twenty-three thousand pounds of cheese.

’Round the corner at the hole-in-the-wall panino place, the panino man in his striped butcher’s apron made me a midday snack to fortify me for party prep. “I don’t know what I want,” I’d said. “The mackerel,” he’d said. “Perfect,” I’d said. “No,” he’d said, then, “the chicken escarole—” and here he’d closed his eyes at the sheer wonder of the chicken escarole. “With ham,” he’d said, “and cheese.” “I’ll take it!” I’d said, and soon he was letting the fragrant rough-cut basil fall from his fingers. The sun was coming straight down Macklin Street through the thick glass windows, and the cobblestones looked like shining water.



“Please come to my housewarming party,” I’d e-mailed a couple of weeks ago. “We like a warm house, and I haven’t figured out how to turn on the heat yet.”

And they came, from five p.m. to eight to nine till I lost track of time, they came and made merry, and all was warm and good. It turns out—I wasn’t sure, after two years in graduate school, calling my own shots schedule-wise—that one can hold down some sort of job AND throw a fairly bitchin’ party. It just takes a little planning, is all, and if there is one thing I can do, it is plan. You can ask my mother about this one, for she believes I am such a master planner I should go back to Singapore and become an Office Manager. Thank you, mother, for the encouragement. Reach for the skies, that’s what I say too.

Tangent about my mother—I was talking to her on the phone this afternoon, and in the middle of my saying something about something, she said, “OH! Man U has just scored a goal.” “Thank you, Mowmy, for your full attention,” I said. “Look,” she said. “I have even muted the commentary on the TV.” “If I didn’t care about you at all,” she said, “I would just get off the phone and go and watch the football.” She is a paragon of motherly love, this one.

But, yes. Turns out if you bake the lemon tart and the chocolate tart the night before, making an extra shortcrust pastry for the keeping, all you have to do the next afternoon is make the bacon and mushroom quiche, and put together the butternut squash–chickpea-rocket salad, lay it all out, accessorise with cheese and fruit and various little bowls of chocolates and sugared almonds and other sweet whatsits, and turn the lights down low.



IJ girls know a thing or two, which is why IJ girls show up early enough to have two slices of quiche EACH before anyone else arrives. Several neighbourhoods away, Grace must have felt the diminishing quiche in the air, because she called to announce her imminent arrival. “Mon amour,” I said, “I hear you are coming with a gay Scotsman.” “I am,” she said, and then promptly rang the buzzer downstairs, coming up with Philip, and bottles of wine, and a gift box of Ferrero Rocher. “Oho,” I said, for that was what was required, “you are spoileeng me wit zees Rocher.”

There was Sylvia, who invited me to her company’s launch party, where there may be Champagne; Akira, who is not Japanese; Ricky, whose band we will go see perform in a couple of weeks; Seung Yun, who is making me want to go to Barcelona the day after I get back from Paris; Antony, who seemed to get drunk very quickly. Antony hung out by the stereo most of the night, and kept us going with Lauren Hill, and Wham!, and the Cardigans, and the Eels. The Strokes, Saint Etienne, Scissor Sisters, No Doubt. “I am very impressed at your CD collection,” he said. “I have not met a girl with such a cool collection in a long time.” Being the sort of boy who says “I am the best dentist in London”, he also said: “Who taught you about music?” “I took a class,” I said. “There was a syllabus, and appendices.” “But also,” I said, “I am not here to impress you.”

But the thing I was not about to say was: “I listen to Bright Eyes and Hank Williams because I was in love with this boy. There were those late New York City nights we walked arm-in-arm, and there was something beautiful about the ambiguity of it all. The lights were always haloed, it seemed, and I remember how the smoke came curling out of his mouth when he had a cigarette.” I was not about to say: “I listen to Manu Chao and Stevie Wonder and João Gilberto because I was in love with this other boy. I remember the long, sweet summer days, and I remember trading grins across the big dinner table, and I remember standing on a Brooklyn rooftop watching the yellow buses go by.” “I remember,” I was not going to say, “that one afternoon when his arm brushed against mine, I felt hot all the way up to my shoulder.”

By the end of the night, there had been wine spilled, and chocolate smeared on the wall, for it turned out I had invited monkeys to my housewarming party. Grace was eating the salad straight out of the serving bowl, straight from the serving spoons. We were smoking in the kitchen by an open window, shivering in the chill of early morning.



This afternoon at Bar Italia, the waiter with the architectural spectacles said: “You were not here last week.” “It’s true,” I said, and inside I was pleased that they had noticed. On the way home, I stopped at the corner shop for a Guardian. “You are late today,” the newsagent man said, and his dark eyes disappeared with smiling. “Normally you come in the morning.” “Man,” I said, “I woke up so late today,” and inside I wrinkled my nose with a childish glee. This weekend, we have had a housewarming, followed by a home.

Waking up early, before the sun. I remember when I was in Singapore still, a child, and waking up at six for school. We were small, and so sullen—still asleep, really—at the breakfast table. At six in the morning in Singapore, the humidity of the day hadn’t settled in yet. At six, I seem to remember, the sky was still a soft blue, and you forgot that in a matter of hours the muggy, tropical heat would creep in, and seep into everything—papers, the sharp creases of our pinafores. I remember that when we came back from school in the afternoons, we were crumpled, and smelt faintly of sweat, of pencil-smudged books, of canvas shoes and concrete floors.

I was awake early yesterday and I am awake early today because these days I am a contributing member of society. A contributing member, at eight pounds some per hour, standing all day in front of the scanner-copier at some new-media place in Camden. I’m not saying anything about my nimble Oriental fingers or anything, but every time I showed up at my supervisor’s desk having completed scanning a thick folder of contracts, she’d say: “Wow! That was quick!” or “You’re really whizzing through it!” or “Bloody hell!” I wanted to say, “You are kind, but this is monkey work.” I’m not not-grateful for work, I just wish it were work that meant something.



An hour for lunch brought a stroll down Pratt Street to the Camden Cafe: wood panelling halfway up the textured green walls, the grill tucked into a side corner, an arcade game in the back. A single elderly man in a low, flat cap. A woman with black hair and black eyes who flirted with the short-order chef. She sounded young but her face told a different story. Her smile was wide, and true. Two pounds forty for a veggie burger and a Ribena, and feet up against the moulded plastic chairs.

I was rocking the Young Professional look today in a jacquard skirt and flapper heels, and a white shirt crisp like the day. Two hours over lunch in the grand dining room at the gorgeous restored Pumphouse restaurant by the rail tracks in Hornsey, the old white tiles polished like Industry and Promise, and I surprised myself by how competent I can be. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, thank you, Oprah, I am working on it. But two months into a frustrating job search, sometimes a girl falls to insecurities, what can you do.

This afternoon I was sitting there at the table, and I heard these words coming out of my mouth, and, man, it sure sounded like I knew what I was talking about—and then all of a sudden I wasn’t pretending anymore, if I had been pretending at all. And I don’t want to get ahead of myself here or anything, but I just want to say, I might get to do a work experience gig at a press that publishes picture books in English and French. I will say this one more time, just to be sure we all understand: Picture books. English, AND French. AND, actually, while we’re at it, Chinese. You don’t have to tell me how perfect this would be, BECAUSE I ALREADY KNOW.

Post-lunch, optimistic and jaunty, I celebrated by swishing down Marylebone High Street in secretary chic. It is fancy in those parts, fancy like a pink Turkish delight, fancy like a macaron cassis-violette from Ladurée. There were fairy lights in the trees as dusk settled around us, and the moon was a perfect luminous circle in the darkening sky.

I scheduled a Very Professional Business Lunch for this afternoon, which made me feel like I’d done enough work for the week. A job probably won’t come of it, but a job might come from something that might come of it. I dunno. The job search is boring and uninspiring. I have very little to say about it.

But, so.

I have a Very Professional Business Lunch this afternoon, and I kept meaning to try and be Very Professional last night and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Instead—

of course you know there is an “instead”—

but may I just add that I have IRONED A SHIRT for this lunch; you cannot say I am not trying a bit—

instead, somehow, with midnight coming on, I was logging on to everybody’s favourite French radio show, back on air from a way-too-long hiatus, and in a heartbeat it was all the hits from that one delicious summer. There was that day, the rooftops of Paris stretching out into the blue, and everything electric with the starting of a something.

Saturday night at Elaine’s birthday party, I was trying to tell Hens about Cantal, le fromage qui bouge tout seul, and she said: “Is this the cheese with the maggots?” It is not often, I think, that I come to a complete stop, words and actions alike, but believe you me, it was like maggots in the headlights. Or something. “I am speechless!” I said, and then, louder, to reiterate the most booming speechlessness in the world: “Do you hear? I am speechless!” I gathered up enough wits, then, to say: “Why have you brought this filth into my house?” but then I had to resume the cringing.

Henny says this is a cheese—

oh, I am still shuddering now—

Henny says this is a cheese that is made with maggot eggs in it, so that the maggots grow inside the cheese. The cheese is all the maggots have ever known, so that they are—think about it—made from the cheese as much as the cheese is made from them. As an exercise in theory, this cheese is an amazing thing. Happily for me, I don’t eat theory.

What I do eat is the bacon and spinach quiche and the pear-almond tart I made for the party, and all the little somethings Elaine was putting together all afternoon: the devilled eggs, the crudités, the konnyaku—plates and plates of colour and festive tastiness.



The good thing about throwing a party is that I like throwing parties, but the good thing about having Elaine throw a party at my place is that it looks like I am throwing a party when really I am camping out in the kitchen talking to Nai and Henny. I mean, I like the meet-and-greet and all—

and, hey, I was not a complete social misfit. I did meet and greet: Graham, who was very tall, and Katie, who was very small. Mimi and Lulu in full effect, with Mimi shedding sequins from her shirt onto the party floor all night, and Lulu in raptures over the fridge, the coffee maker, Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. Valerie, who brought a chocolate cake; Aileen, who is not going back; Jackie, from South Africa, in a big gold belt—

so—

I like the meet-and-greet and all, but sometimes the party’s in the other room, y’know?



Sunday morning I groaned awake from having gone to bed very recently—but dim sum in Bayswater waits for no man. A good half-hour before Royal China even opened, a crowd was gathering outside. Then the click of a lock unlocked, and the glass doors flung open like welcoming arms, and the unsmiling faces of Chinese waiters ready to do you no favours.

We were eleven, which is a goodly sized crowd for a goodly selection of dim sum. All the classics at eight pounds a head, and Nai even got the beginning of a smile from the brisk waitress. He might have her number by next week, which means that in a month or so the wheels may be greased to such an extent that we might be able to enter through the kitchen next time.



Dim sum Sundays are good-vibes Sundays, and good-vibes Sundays bring a stroll down Moscow Road, veering left to the pub. Coffees by the open fire, and sugar cubes for sucking. And the afternoon light coming in the coloured window panes was warm and cosy like Sunday.

Like Sunday, one thing led to another, the bookshop and the train and the library and the grocery store, and still the sky was blue, and the company was easy and good, like Sunday.

There was not the Sunday paper because I am still working on the Saturday paper, but there was leftover birthday cake and an open bottle of Côte du Rhone when I got home.

The Artist.

He was speaking. very. slowly. by the end of the night, and talking about “performativity” in his clothing. “Why do I wear black all the time?” he said.

“Do you wear black all the time?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Umm. So why do you wear black all the time?”

Silence.

Silence.

“Because,” he said. “I am prepared for the end.”

“Please,” I should have said, “if you go down those stairs, the door will lead you outside.” Instead, I said: “Mm.”

No, actually I said: “Mm. But, what, you think the end will be big mess, and you don’t want the stains to show?” and I saw in his bleary, unfocused eyes that he thought I was foolish.

“I used to be an alcoholic,” he said, and he swirled the wine in his plastic cup.

Friday night in style is gin and tonics upstairs and outside when the rain’s done. Nai said, “That gin and tonic tasted like 7-Up,” but that’ll teach him to try to get a stiff drink at a student bar. I toasted to complicated histories, which made the boy draw his glass back and say: “Only if Andy Lau has the last word.” But then the last word was in Chinese, which means I had to say, “The what-what?” The translation is, essentially: “Doesn’t matter sky long earth long, as long as got,” which is why we LUV Chinese people.

The 243 came rumbling down the street and the best seats in the house were waiting for us, front row, top deck. London through foggy post-rain windows, and the romance of the urban chromatoblur. We traipsed about in Shoreditch, roundabout a roundabout, looking for a birthday party, and no one seemed to have heard of our destination. Nai tells me there is a roundabout somewhere in the city that is in the shape of the number eight, and I can’t decide if it’s so crazy he must be dreaming, or if it’s so crazy it must be true. I want to drive it, in any case, with Bowie’s “Queen Bitch” on volume up.

On Old Street, kitty-corner from the guy peeing against a brick wall, number three-thirty-six.

“There’s the Resilience!” Nai said, finally, pointing, triumphant.

“It says ‘The Reliance’,” I said.

“Same thing lah!”

Inside, the crush, and warm enough to peel off the layers—the vermilion jacket, the green cardigan—and stand by the giant French windows in a summer tank top and jeans. Kris and Ollie, Seung Yun and Andrea, Chrissy, and Emily, and Marc, whose birthday it wasn’t, not yet anyway, and it’s funny now to think that the only thing I was really concerned about before coming out here was that I wasn’t going to know anyone.

The thing is, life is fucking sweet. I have an invitation to Barcelona, a dinner date for Paris, a movie projector party—well, this one we can’t talk about, ’cause it might involve a little light-fingered action by a new employee. Sometime after midnight, I was perched on the banister, wordless against the wordless whirl, and it was as simple as a girl a little bit in love with a new city.

Drained. This physical exhaustion, this utter emptiness that feels full somehow. Solid. Good. CC says Henny’s secretly training us for a triathlon, what with the horse riding, and the swimming, and the walk all over Victoria yesterday.

The Ealing Riding School is just down Gunnersbury from the Chinese medicine place—this one a nice suburban English house with a pagoda top over the front porch. There’s a metal pipe gate and a wooden swinging gate out front, and the paddocks just beyond. There’s coffee in the main room, a small white dog keeping an eye on all of us, wood floors scuffed and gritty. Boots clump-clump-clumping, and a fuzzy brown ball of cat asleep on a pile of jackets.

The horse was called Promise, and I didn’t fall off. True, we were just moseying ’round the paddock, while I learnt how to make her halt and go, to turn left and turn right; and true, Henny and I somehow found ourselves on the IJ girls of horses, who kept stopping for a nibble. But still.

Learning how to get on the horse was easy, learning how to get off was hard. To dismount, you need to swing your right leg over its ass and slide down the other side. You swing your right leg up and back, and you think you are swinging high enough, but I assure you you are not. And every time your heel kicks the horse as you try to swing your leg over, you say, “Oh! Sorry! Sorry!”

Today there was Georgia, a brown horse with white socks. I am learning trot work, which is surprising all around because of the rhythm of it, the speed, the bumpiness on muddy ground, and having to be aware of every bit of my body at the same time: standing up in the saddle, sitting down, hips wide, knees soft, heels down, shoulders back. There were moments when it all came together, though, and, man, it makes a girl want to crow ya-haa!



I poked about in the stables after, “Hi, beauty; Hi, cute; Hey, sweet; You’re nice”, stroking their long noses and patting their smooth necks. The horses were probably thinking “Loopy city girl”, but they patiently stood about to be petted.

These half-hour lessons are a tease. We only have one more session tomorrow, and I might just have to refuse to get off the horse at the end of it. Hens is suggesting a riding holiday in Andalucia, but this will have to wait till she gets a job at the United Nations and starts raking in big enough bucks for the both of us.

I want to say one more thing, which is this: A horse walks into a bar. Bartender says: “Hey, why the long face?”

Michele blew into town this afternoon on her way to South Africa. Six years of silence, then a seven-hour layover in London, and thank heavens for the Heathrow Express. Six years to catch up on over soups and salads at Paul, and then the wind carried her off again. Her six years have involved a proposed threesome at five in the morning, sharp turns on Chicago streets, a Boston boy on the way to Miami. “He had the window seat,” she said, “and he needed to go to the toilet, and he was all wakin’ my ass up.”

“These are amazing stories,” I said. “It’s like Tym told me once,” I said—except I didn’t call her Tym, I called her Y------------------, because that is her name—“sometimes you just have to do it for the story.”

“But I don’t want to have a movie made of my life,” she said. “I want a house, maybe a child, maybe a dog, a two-car garage. The simple life.”

Me, I’ve decided I’m going to play me in the movie version of my life.

Tonight it is drizzling again. I am making a loaf of banana bread because tomorrow—hold on to your hats—I am going HORSE RIDING. I know I am supposed to be moping around and looking for a job, but, I mean, HORSES. Henny and I, we are taking the train to Ealing, and we are going to get on horses. It has been years now I have had a thing for theoretical horses, so why not. But I will tell you a secret, which is that sometime in the summer of 2004, when CC and I were at the Mudgee Motor Inn west of Sydney, there was a horse in the paddock outside. “I’m gonna go look at the horse,” I’d said, but then when he started ambling toward me I ran.

I was on the phone with Tom just now, Tom who grew up with horses on the family homestead in Omaha, Nebraska, and he said: “I will give you some advice, even though none was solicited, and it is this: When you get on the horse, do not fear how high up off the ground you are.” I had not thought to fear this until it was brought up. “Don’t forget,” he said, “that it has four legs and is very sturdy.”

I will try to remember this, I suppose, until maybe when Mr Horse decides to run for the hills, at which point I might forget everything and just start screaming.

So, but. May I just say?, I have been told that I should wear boots to the lesson. Cowboy boots! Okay!

But, so. The banana bread. It’s just that I think we might need a snack, going out to Ealing and riding horses and all. Suzzan wanted to know if I was going to bring the whole loaf, so I said: “No, hello, do you think I am one of the Famous Five?” There will be no potted ham sandwiches, no ginger beer, no lashings of cream on anything. Just a couple of slices of banana bread, and maybe an apple, even though the horse might eat it.

Run up the stairs at four-thirty in the morning, take a nap, roll out in the Saturday sunshine, and play it again, Sam.

’Round midnight Friday on Wells Street, the sign said CLOSED but the door was open to us, and we went down, down, and through the doorway into a Murakami novel: Japanese girls with sharp fringes and uneven ponytails; shiso mojitos sweet and rummy; a glowing sphere and empty Champagne bottles on a dark piano. A slim pack of Camels, and that moment—I love that moment, probably because of its exact momentariness—that round, full instant when a face glows with a match struck to light a waiting cigarette. Late became later, and then later became later still. There was Chris, a silent physicist, and Leaf, who talked enough for both of them. I am doing an Amy Tan and exoticising, because really Leaf is the translation of the girl’s Japanese name, Yo. We love Yo, the largest-eyed, biggest-smiled, jerkiest-nodded Japanime character come to life, and sitting across the table from us.

“It’s a SECRET,” she enunciated, slowly, loudly, above the crowd chatter and the clouds of cigarette smoke. She widened her wide eyes. “You see the BARTENDER. BEHIND ME, in the WHITE SHIRT—” and here she raised a slender finger and pointed, to be sure.

“Your secret’s safe,” Marc said, as she jabbed her finger over her shoulder in the direction of the bartender in question. She may also, here, have said, “THAT ONE, in the WHITE SHIRT.”

“Your secret’s safe,” Marc said. “No one suspects a thing.”

“I like you,” I told her. “You’re crazy.”

+

Saturday after the weekend paper at Bar Italia, there was a small paper sack of hot chestnuts and a strawberry daiquiri before the Guy Fawkes fireworks over the river. I heart fireworks: the little curly ones that dance a curly dance; the ones that explode, with deep thumps, into giant bush flowers; the ones like Pop Rocks fizzing; the ones that scream across the sky; the ones that shoot up in golden streaks before disintegrating into gnarled hands, dust to dust.

We were carried along the South Bank in the thickness, after, me and Thush, in the sulphur-scented air, before we crossed Waterloo to navigate the dark cobblestones of Covent Garden and Soho. Up a narrow stairway in Café España, crowdy and rowdy, a picture of David Beckham was taped to the wall, next to the fire emergency sign. The dumbwaiter was constantly in action, bringing up platters of sardines, red peppers, grilled squid, bacalao, saffron rice. Our table quickly disappeared under small plates of tapas and an earthenware jug of sangria.

And I was so close to home, then, and we were full and so cosy, but I’d said I’d go to the birthday thing of a friend of a friend, so we hopped the 390 across Oxford to Ruby Lounge. Downstairs with the thumping beats, the Indian girls were glamorous and exquisite like Bollywood come to town. There were shouty introductions to Bubli and Ricky and Pompom and Rav? Tav? Kav?, man, I don’t know; to Suvak who, in his distressed Mooks shirt and short, uneven tie, in his wavy, slept-in mop, could have been the sixth Stroke; to Anthony, whose birthday it was. Anthony didn’t dance, because Anthony doesn’t dance, but apparently Anthony will boozily make out in the corner with the girl in the layer-cake dress. A skinny guy in a faded T-shirt and jeans made me smile and remember New York because he clearly, and I mean this in the best and only way possible, he clearly didn’t give a shit.

We danced to Justin Timberlake and we danced to Dr Dre, and we cannot help but be part of our generation, which means that when Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” came on, the dance floor was crazy shimmy.

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Sunday morning I had the cell phone on one side of me and the phone phone on the other, and both were ringing like a global conspiracy to get me out of bed. “Did I wake you?” “Yes.” “But what time is it?” “Um. Eleven-something.” “That’s what I thought.”

Still, I am SO efficient (small things move fast) that there was time for chestnut honey on walnut toast AND a load of laundry before lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant called Vietnamese Restaurant. Spring rolls, of course, and pho, of course, and a number fifteen from the lurid drinks menu. Number fifteen is listed, in Chinese, as Three Colours Water, which comes out red beans and corn and green jelly, crushed ice and coconut milk. You know—you would not accept anything less—it comes in a tall soda glass. It amazed the table when it arrived, and I think some of the boys with their beers were a little jealous.

I just want to take a little tangent here and mention that one of said boys at said table was this guy Taka, a Japanese dude from Argentina, whose father makes honey. Which is to say, his father keeps bees, who make honey. A Japanese dude from Argentina is already interesting, but when honey comes into the picture, well, I mean, SO MANY QUESTIONS. I imagined that when Taka was a seven-year-old beekeeper, he had the power to sic the bees on the mean kids at school, but he said it wasn’t like that. I tell you what I have learned today. Fact number one, it is mostly eucalyptus and sunflower honey you get from Argentina. Fact number two, guess what bees eat, gowan, guess, you’ll never guess, yup, HONEY. The world is an amazing place.

We quickstepped through the drizzle down Shaftesbury to the Curzon to watch “De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté”, which, even viewed with craned necks from the second row, is superb like a Bach fugue on a rainy day, like the beauty of torn edges and creased corners. And then of course there is the X-TREME HOTTNESS of Romain Duris.

“You cannot say,” I said to Henny as we filed out of the theatre, “that he is not terribly attractive.”

“Yeah, I dunno,” she said. “I was trying to decide.”

“I decide for you now,” I said. “He is, he is.”

“Yes, I suppose,” she said. “In a dirty Frenchman sort of way.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” I said.

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Tonight there is a white lotus mooncake and a pot of genmaicha. I was playing Gal Costa earlier, but now it’s quiet.

Whooo, life is good, a walk down Electric Avenue, the market’s out, blue-and-white striped tarpaulin on one side, shading pyramids of fruit and veg. Butchers line the other side, they smile hello between the naked chickens hanging above the counter. Display cases pink with meat, the smell is raw, red, sharp in the air, and salt beef’s on special. I’m filmed for TV, I say “It’s a matter of semantics, isn’t it”, the pretty boy street interviewer says “You speak English better than me.” Hot chocolate upstairs at the Ritzy before hopping the Routemaster home, then a phone call invite to dinner as I’m putting a pan on the stove. Sweet mangoes and pomegranate seeds at number twenty-two. Post-midnight, I pretend to refuse, he pretends to listen, we head out to wait for the night bus. I stay up too late, I spend too long on international phone calls, I bake truffle tarts. In the afternoon, the boys at Bar Italia bring a foamy cappuccino before I can say a word, whooo, life is good.

We sort of didn’t know how to get there, but we sort of did, and then we missed the first bus stop, but the next one was the right one anyway. Down Whitecross Street narrow and dim, and then the Barbican in front of us, and, to the left, the crazy electric hive with its irregular windows lit up here and there by late-night office bees.

Seu Jorge came out to whoops and cheers: long and skinny, jeans and a T-shirt, jaunty dreads. He plays like blood and skin, like kisses fast and kisses soft, like the darkness of night, and I don’t know the words, but all you want to say anyway is Yes, please, more. There was something in his hands that reminded me of a boy I know.

There were tambourines and drums and a clicky thing and a pully-moany thing and a rattly thing and more thumping things, and we danced and danced, and they danced, too. They had the night sky come out for “Fiore de la città”—a guitar, a voice, and pinpoints of light against the black.

I was slouching in the tube back towards Kings Cross when the midnight hunger came upon us. On Euston, Chop Chop Noodle Bar was still lit up like immigrant work ethic. One number fifty-five and one number eighty-six later, I said: “Walk me to my bus?”, so he did. The 91 came rumbling down the road just in time for a kiss on the cheek and a wave good-bye.